Thursday, May 5, 2022

Down In The Mouth


By Miss Kubelik

We cats know why the Republicans are more alarmed by the leak of the draft Alito Roe decision than they are by the contents of the decision itself. The leak has wrecked everything!

Instead of a nice, clean and — most important — authoritative ruling to send millions of American women back to the 1950s, they have a mess. The decision, if handled properly and not surfacing until the end of June, still would have caused an earthquake, of course. But the Court would have handed it down on firmer footing. They would have seemed their usual implacable, unreachable selves, and in control. Under those circumstances, in a virtual stare decisis staredown, they wouldn't blink.

Now, however, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health will be tainted forever. Whether the Court ultimately goes full Alito or does some sort of pullback from his draconian draft, Dobbs will have a million asterisks after its name. Everyone, not just on our side but on all sides, will be big mad, and the firestorm will start all over again. (Or maybe the word is "intensify." Alito has already had to cancel a public appearance today, and tall security fences are going up around the Court building.)

The victory over choice that the right wing has pursued for so long is spoiled. Republicans know this, which is why they've been bitching and moaning about it ever since it broke Monday night. 

But we still don't believe the draft was leaked by a liberal justice's staff. As we've said before, surely it was a clerk or some other staffer on the Court's right wing — a true-believer-idiot graduate of Liberty University who thought the news would rally the troops. We mostly suspect someone who works for Biff or Coat Hanger (or, to a lesser extent, Gorsuch). Those three haven't been justices long enough to have office cultures that respect the Court as an institution. After 30 years, even Clarence Thomas's team might have that. We cats HISS.

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